Some Christmas tales are so straightforward and intimate, you can tell them around a fireplace with a cup of cocoa.
“A Civil War Christmas” isn’t one of those stories.
Set in December 1864, Paula Vogel’s sprawling play is made up of several storylines and even more characters — and it takes them a whopping 2 1/2 hours to finally converge. It’s like “Short Cuts” or “Crash” but with Robert E. Lee, John Wilkes Booth and, of course, Abraham Lincoln — the hottest president of 2012, never mind that he’s been dead 147 years.
But this endearing, occasionally trying play isn’t about historical figures and what they did on the eve of the Civil War’s last Christmas.
First, Vogel (“How I Learned To Drive”) mixes and matches those names with equally real but lesser-known people such as Elizabeth Keckley (Karen Kandel), an African-American seamstress and friend of Mrs. Lincoln’s (Alice Ripley, “Next to Normal”).
Second, we’re at New York Theatre Workshop, not Confederate Williamsburg, so this isn’t a pageant but a fable. Intermingling with the likes of the 16th president (Bob Stillman) are fictional characters, notably Hannah (Amber Iman), an escaped slave trying to reach the White House with her young daughter, Jessa (Sumaya Bouhbal).
To get the little one going, Hannah sings “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” a folk tune often associated with the Underground Railroad and one of the many traditional numbers that punctuate the show. Music director Andrew Resnick provides the bulk of the accompaniment on the piano, though cast members pick up a guitar here, a banjo there.
It’s hard not to be touched by the plain beauty of these songs, especially since the actors are often in glorious voice — Iman, in particular, has a warm, burnished tone. Surprisingly, the single worst performance comes from Ripley, a Tony winner whose vibrato-laden “Silent Night” is like nails on chalkboard.
Between the interlocking stories, musical interludes and Vogel’s taste for extraneous diversions — did we really need an encounter between a horse and a mule? — the show can drag, especially in its first act.
Thankfully, director Tina Landau (“Superior Donuts”) proves to be an excellent juggler, gracefully keeping all her balls in the air.
And when the resolution comes, it’s as sweet as we need it to be. It is, after all, a holiday show. Who wants gritty realism in that?